Volume 7, Chapter 7 – The Twelfth Floor of the Labyrinth

It was like falling into a long-sealed tomb. An endless darkness crawled onto their skin from all sides. The damp scent of soil mixed with the stench of beast pelts, and the echoing footsteps all around made one lose their sense of direction.

This was the twelfth underground floor of the labyrinth, the furthest frontline adventurers had managed to reach.

No one knew how deep this underground labyrinth truly was. All they knew was that it was as intricate and complex as an ant’s nest. As for how they discovered this, an incident from a few years ago serves as an example. At the time, in order to explore the labyrinth more quickly, people naively believed it was a simple spiral structure that descended continuously. They thought that if they just kept digging down with shovels, they could one day bypass the guardians’ watch, reach the deepest level, and take the treasure within.

These people did succeed. They spent half a year digging through what was then the fourth floor and, without killing the guardian, reached a brand-new map. But what they didn’t know at the time was that the new map was not the fifth floor that should have followed the fourth, but the terrifying ninth floor. The ninth-floor monsters, smelling the outside air, swarmed up through the newly dug shaft into the fourth floor like a tidal wave, nearly wiping out all the adventurers there. The frenzied monsters even charged out onto the surface. It wasn’t until a passing Crimson Gold-rank adventurer party intervened that the rampaging monsters were barely suppressed back down to the ninth floor.

As this incident resulted in over a thousand casualties, the city lord of Gota at the time decided to publicly hang the adventurers who had dug through the labyrinth to quell the public’s anger. However, those individuals had already been torn to shreds by the first wave of monsters. In the end, the lord could only decree that if a similar incident were to occur again, the families of the perpetrators would be executed as well. From then on, everyone knew that the underground labyrinth had a vast and complex structure, and that monsters from several floors below could be lurking just beneath the soil.

“I can feel a lot of monsters around us…”

Hiding most of her body behind her large shield, Mary cautiously peered around. Although half-elves did not possess the excellent night vision of vampires, the keen senses from her elven blood allowed her to perceive the presence of many creatures nearby.

Glancing at the rustling insects hidden in the corners, Yisi, who had just brought her companions into the labyrinth, waved her hand dismissively.

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“They’re just small level 2 to 3 insects. Don’t worry about them.”

“Onee-sama, where is this…?”

“The twelfth floor of the underground labyrinth. Tiffany and the others are in trouble. Camilla, could you take out the magic lamp?”

“Yes.”

Camilla took a prism-shaped crystal from her storage item and infused it with magic power. A dim, cold light instantly illuminated their surroundings—a wide tunnel that could fit five people walking abreast, about three meters high. The walls were covered in folds like a karst cave ¹ a type of cave formed by water dissolving soluble bedrock, typically limestone, forming features like sinkholes and underground rivers . Even though they were underground with no light, plants grew in the corners where the ceiling met the walls. At the same time, things like cobwebs and small holes drilled by insects were visible everywhere.

Thank goodness people have been here before, otherwise I’d definitely have a face full of cobwebs right now. The very thought is awful.

It was worth noting that on Yisi’s [Omniscient Map], the labyrinth’s structure looked less like an ant’s nest and more like a sprawling neural network. There were countless rooms of varying sizes, like neurons, and from these rooms extended countless dendrite-like passages. These passages connected each room, which housed innumerable monsters, thereby forming what was known as a [Floor].

Judging by these complex passages alone, it would take at least a month to explore every corner of a single floor. Factoring in the need to deal with monsters and various traps, that time would have to be extended indefinitely—after all, few could guarantee they would survive to the end.

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Yisi looked at the [Omniscient Map].

Pepe’s group had very little magic power left. But perhaps because they had hidden in a spot the guardian couldn’t see, their HP hadn’t decreased at all from the moment Yisi entered the labyrinth until now.

This way, I don’t have to be in such a hurry.

Of course, it wasn’t that Yisi wasn’t worried about Pepe and the others. She just thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to experience this kind of heart-pounding fear. It was a sort of punishment for delving deep into the labyrinth without telling her, like a child who sneaks out to play behind their parents’ back only to come home and find the door locked.

“Hmm, when I heard that even a level 20 person would have trouble surviving here alone, I thought there would be some powerful monsters. But it turns out their strength is generally around level 12. It’s not a bad place for grinding levels.”

Currently, her companions’ levels were: Camilla level 14, Mary level 15, Tiffany level 11, Pepe level 24, and Refina level 15. Since leaving the Pescia Territory, she had rarely taken her companions to level up, so besides Camilla and Pepe, no one else’s level had changed. It wasn’t that Yisi was being lazy and didn’t want to raise her companions’ levels, but rather that she had discovered a very serious problem in the process.

Her companions were leveling up so simply and crudely that they were in a predicament where they failed to learn new skills.

While this wasn’t an issue for the magic-based Camilla and Tiffany, who could just study spells diligently later, it was a critical weakness for the warrior-class Mary and Refina.

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Close-combat skills could only be learned through insight gained before leveling up. Take Mary’s [Shield Counterattack] for example. Initially, Mary could only grasp the threshold of the skill through her Fallen talent. In her mind, [Shield Counterattack] was just a vague concept. But after she leveled up, the skill became clearly solidified in her mind, usable at any time, and its power and flexibility were much greater than before.

Therefore, if a warrior-class character leveled up too quickly, they would skip the process of gaining insight and thus learn no new skills, only receiving a slight increase in their stats.

It was better to learn skills through challenging, real combat. Her method of picking out the easiest monsters from a large group felt like picking up sesame seeds while dropping the watermelon.

As she was thinking about such things, the sound of many footsteps suddenly came from behind.

“Onee-sama, someone is coming. Should we hide?”

Hide?

Yisi was stunned for a moment, then understood Camilla’s meaning. It was just like the forsaken lands in the Blood Clan capital of Alvier; because it was difficult to find a murderer, cruel acts of killing for treasure easily occurred between adventurers in the labyrinth. To avoid unnecessary trouble, adventurers would avoid each other.

Yisi thought for a moment before waving her hand.

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“No need. We’ll just keep walking forward and pretend we just got here.”

After all, teleportation magic was a lost art. Casually demonstrating it in front of others could bring her trouble—like people begging her to help them break through the labyrinth.

Camilla nodded.

“Understood.”

The group began to move forward at an unhurried pace, with Yisi in the lead and Mary at the rear.

Soon, the adventurer party from behind caught up to them.

“Hurry, hurry! Warriors, carry the magic chanters who can’t run! We have to make it before there are any casualties!”